P

2

The Austrian-born composer Ernst Krenek (1900–91) has been described, with good reason,

as a compositional ‘companion of the twentieth century’.1 Stretching over seventy years of

productive life, his musical legacy encompasses most of the common forms of modern western

art music, from string quartets and symphonies to opera and electronic music. Moreover, it

engages with many of the key artistic movements of the day – from late Romanticism and Neo-

classicism to abstract Expressionism and Post-modernism. The sheer scope of his music seems

to reflect something profound about the condition of his turbulent times.

The origins of Krenek’s extraordinary artistic disposition are to be found in the equally

extraordinary circumstances into which he was born. He came to maturity in Vienna in the

dying days of the First World War and the Austro-Hungarian Empire and, with its collapse

in 1919, the cultural norms that had nurtured Vienna’s enviable musical reputation all but

disappeared. In addition, by this time, new forms of transmission of mass culture, such as the

wireless, gramophone and cinema, were transforming the ways and means by which cultural

life could be both propagated and received.

As an artist trying to come to terms with these changes, Krenek was doubly fortunate.

Not only was he generally recognised as one of the most gifted composers of his generation;

he was also an insightful thinker about music and its role in society. Right from the moment

in 1921 when, in the face of growing tension between himself and his composition teacher

Franz Schreker, he set out on a full-time career as a composer, he determined that he would be

more than just as a passive reflector of the world around him; he would be both its witness and

conscience.

1 Cf. Matthias Schmidt, Ernst Krenek: Zeitgenosse des 20. Jahrhunderts/Companion of the 20th Century, Wiener Stadts- und

Landesbibliothek, Vienna, 2000.

ERNEST KRENEK: MUSIC FOR CHAMBER ORCHESTRA

by Peter Tregear

3

Krenek found an early model in the large-scale works of Gustav Mahler, and indeed his first

major compositions were to be three symphonies, composed in 1921 and 1922. But he came to

international prominence when he followed the example of Schreker and composed for the operatic

stage: the premiere of Jonny spielt auf, a jazz-inflected Zeitoper (that is, an opera which reflected

contemporary concerns), in 1927, caused an immediate sensation and was soon performed in

opera-houses from Leningrad to New York. It also became the emblematic example of ‘degenerate’

music for the Nazis, and their rise to power, combined with the hostile reception of Krenek’s

decisive turn towards the twelve-tone technique in his later opera Karl V (1933), forced him into

exile in America in 1938.2

His experience of exile arguably colours almost everything he wrote for his next fifty years

of productive life. It was not simply a kind of existential homesickness, for although he never

relinquished his profound identification with his place of birth, Krenek also grew quickly to love the

landscape of North America. Rather, it was more of a deep recognition by the composer that a state

of exile, understood in its abstract and poetic as much as its physical sense, is perhaps an unavoidable

condition of modern life. Certainly it seemed an unavoidable condition of the modern composer, who

now seemed irrevocably separated from mass culture and broad public recognition.

After 1945, Krenek was able to connect with developments in the emerging European musical

avant-garde, especially that centred around the Darmstadt International Summer Courses for New

Music, which helped encourage him to explore the strict serial organisation of musical material in

the manner already being achieved by a new generation of composers like Pierre Boulez. His first

fully serial work was Sestina (1957) for small ensemble and soprano (to his own text) – although,

reflecting in 1970, Krenek ruminated that, as far as this ultra-modernist technique was concerned,

he was ‘blamed (a) for doing it at all, (b) for doing it too late, and (c) for still being at it’.3

He was not merely following an emerging high-modernist fashion, as his own experiments

with serialism were also entirely consistent with the course of his own musical development. The

decision to explore the method was as much a reflection of what he felt as an ethical imperative as

an aesthetic one. In the face of the horrors which had engulfed his place of birth over the course of

two world wars, the search for new order in modern art had become for him inexorably entwined

2 He dropped the hacek in his family name, Křenek, ater his arrival in the USA.

3 Krenek, Horizons Circled: Relections on my Music, University of California Press, Berkley, 1974, p. 75.

4

with notions of personal responsibility; both were struggles to maintain a viable form in a world in

which all that was solid had indeed, it seemed, melted into air. And there were no easy answers. His

serial experiments were never mere exercises in radical iconoclasm; rather they ran alongside, and

occasionally intermingled with, his lingering concern with tradition – his own, and that of western

European culture more generally. Already in Sestina the problematic idea of total order in music is

surreptitiously undermined through the addition of a soprano line composed in free atonality and

the overall juxtaposition of elements of chance and pre-determination.

So, too, Von Vorn Herein, Op. 219[1, composed for the ensemble ‘die reihe’ in 1974, is a

mixture of freely invented sections and those based on a symmetrical twelve-tone row. According

to a programme note by the composer, the result ‘can perhaps be described as old-fashioned

expressionistic’. Indeed, the title itself is, he continues:

also deliberately imprecise: I have made use of the privilege which according to my observation many

painters enjoy when they adorn their paintings with titles that bear no visible reference to them. The piece

was not written from beginning to end but started at various points, and these isolated elements were

later brought into the present context – a manner of composing that I have developed while working in

the electronic medium.

Krenek’s chamber orchestral works and his experiments with electronic music also reveal a

shared interest in tone colour as a fundamental compositional property, an aptitude he may well

have inherited from his composition teacher, Franz Schreker. Notwithstanding their early falling-

out, works like Die Nachtigall, Op. 68a 2, composed in 1931, show that he could certainly emulate

Schreker’s ability to derive the most exquisitely delicate instrumental colours out of an otherwise

unremarkable instrumental ensemble. That he does so in this particular work is all the more

noteworthy given it was originally scored for piano and voice alone.

The author of the text was Karl Kraus, a formidable literary personality who loomed as large

in Krenek’s creative and intellectual life as he did for Arnold Schoenberg and many other figures in

contemporary Vienna. The poem originates from Kraus’ play Wolkenkuckucksheim (1923), ‘Cloud-

Cuckoo-Land’, where the figure of the Nightingale, sung here by a coloratura soprano, represents a

state of total freedom. She addresses earthbound humanity, which is subjugated both by the force

of gravity and by the social weight of law. Passages of ravishing tonality punctuate a texture of the

most delicate atonal expressiveness, as Krenek provides a sympathetic sonic backdrop to the poet’s

longing for a escape from earthly concerns.

Krenek described Im Tal der Zeit, Op. 232 (1979) 3, as a ‘Symphonic Sketch’, but it too seems

to be concerned with a similar underlying poetic idea. Amidst the high modernist character and

textures of his post-1945 works, there are nevertheless references to an old tonal order, presented in

a manner such that suggests to the listener the sonic trace of a world now irrevocably lost. Im Tal der Zeit was written to a commission from the Styrian Autumn Festival of 1980, for a concert to be held

at Admont Abbey, which presented Krenek with an opportunity to refer to his own past as well. The

opening motif is based on the initial phrase of the third song of his Reisebuch des Österreichischen Alpen (1929), which in Krenek’s own words describes this same monastery: ‘Mighty stands the

Abbey down in the valley, firmly set and untouched by the passing of time’. Later in the same song

Krenek notes that the monks who live there ‘are not slaves to technology like us’, and that, having a

drink in the monastery tavern, you might well ponder ‘what kind of senseless life you lead’.

This tendency for self-doubt to be composed into the very structure of a work can also be

heard in Krenek’s Static and Ecstatic, Op. 214 4–, a work which he regarded as one of his

most important for orchestra (the score gives the title also in German, as Statisch und Ekstatisch).

It consists of ten short pieces, some involving serial organisation and others not, a juxtaposition

which is foreshadowed in the title. It had its origins in a commission from Paul Sacher and his

Basel Chamber Orchestra, and was composed in Albuquerque and Palm Springs between October

1971 and June 1972. It presents a mix of static (serial) sections with freely composed interludes.

As Krenek explained in a programme note, movements 1 4, 4 7, 5 8, 7 and 8 belong to

the ‘static’ category, because ‘the rigid control of the musical materials gives them the property

of solid objects, as opposed to movement from point to point, which is associated with the

traditional perception of musical events’. The other movements are freely conceived and recall

the characteristic of early expressionism. The coda of the last movement even hints at a ‘jazz-like’

character.

If self-doubt (as a creative principle) is an undercurrent in these earlier pieces, it becomes

a defining principle in The Dissembler, Op. 229 (1978) . The work arose out of a commission

from the American Camerata for New Music, based in Baltimore. At the time Krenek had become

acquainted with, and was deeply impressed by, the baritone Michael Ingham, and saw in the

commission an opportunity to provide a vehicle for him as well. The text is a melange derived

from works by Krenek himself alongside fragments from Goethe’s Faust, Euripides’ Hecuba, 5

2 2

biblical quotations from the Psalms, the Roman Catholic missal and Ecclesiastes, producing a text

that seems to comment upon, if not deconstruct, itself. Certainly it is paramount in shaping the

musical structure, but then of course Krenek had over half-a-century of experience as a composer

for the stage on which to draw in coming up with an appropriate orchestral accompaniment. His

biographer John Stewart has also drawn attention to the obvious personal resonances in the work

for Krenek, who himself had worn a number of compositional ‘masks’ over the course of his life.4

A dissembler is also someone who plays against convention and authority, a jester who resides

inside the cloak of a sober classicist.

Taken as a whole, Krenek’s late works have been described as something akin to an artistic

stock-take, both in terms of the frequent references to his own creative legacy and to the

turbulent age through which he had lived. This assessment is particularly true of The Dissembler

which, like Krenek’s life-journey itself, is characterised throughout by ceaseless self-examination

and -exploration.

All the works on this CD demonstrate Krenek’s acute awareness of music as an open aesthetic

realm; that is, unavoidably implicated in a broader history of ideas, no matter how much a

composer might wish to impose a closed order upon it. It is testament to his artistic courage that he

did not try to avoid the full implications of this truth, but it also meant that he found no ultimate

repose, no easy self-satisfaction through the mere application of one particular musical technique

or another. The artist had no alternative, he realised, but to question, and question again, the

premises underlying a particular artistic choice. For this reason above all, perhaps, Krenek’s music

speaks to the character of our age.

Peter Tregear is Executive Director of the Academy of Performing Arts, Monash University, Melbourne, and was formerly Lecturer and Director of Music, Fitzwilliam College, University of Cambridge. He has conducted several UK premieres of Weimar-era works, including Max Brand’s opera Maschinist Hopkins at the Queen Elizabeth Hall in 2001, and Krenek’s Schwergewicht in Cambridge in 2004. He is a member of the Advisory Board of the Ernst Krenek Institut in Krems and a committee member of the International Centre for Suppressed Music, London.

6

4 John L. Stewart, Ernst Krenek: he Man and His Music, University of California Press, Berkley, 1991, pp. 364–65.

7

Vienna, with its fruitful tension between tradition and innovation, informs the musical

language of the Austrian violinist Ernst Kovacic. His interpretations of Bach’s solo works

and Mozart’s violin concertos, as well as his dedication to contemporary music, secured

him a place as one of the leading soloists of his generation early in his career. Over the years

many composers have written works for him, including Krenek, Holloway, Osborne, Gruber,

Schwertsik, Eröd, Bischof, Haas and Essl. He performed the world premieres of violin concertos

by Beat Furrer and Django Bates with the Vienna Philharmonic and London Sinfonietta, and

Friedrich Cerha’s Violin Concerto with the Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra.

He performs often as a soloist with prominent orchestras under conductors such as Franz

Wesler-Möst, Roger Norrington, Simon Rattle, Esa-Pekka Salonen and Michael Gielen, in

Europe, Asia, Australia, Africa and the Americas. As both a violinist and chamber musician,

he has been invited to play at festivals in Vienna, Berlin, Salzburg, Edinburgh and the Proms

in London.

He also regularly conducts chamber orchestras, both with and without his violin. From

1996 until 1998 he was the artistic director of the Vienna Chamber Orchestra. Ensembles

with which he regularly works include the Scottish, Irish, English, Norwegian, St Paul’s and

Stuttgarter Chamber Orchestras, the Northern and Britten Sinfonias and the Cameratas

Roman and Salzburg as well as Klangforum Wien, Ensemble Modern, BIT20 Ensemble and the

Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie. He is currently the artistic director of the Chamber Orchestra

Leopoldinum in Wrocław, Poland. He plays a Guadagnini violin from 1754.

Agata Zubel is a composer as well as a signer and vocalist. She was born in Wrocław and

studied composition with Jan Wichrowski and voice with Danuta Paziuk-Zipser at the Karol

Lipiński Academy of Music where in 2004 she received a doctorate in musical arts. She also

studied in the Netherlands. She currently teaches at the Academy of Music in Wrocław. She is

also a member of the Polish Composers’ Union.

As a vocalist she has participated in many prestigious musical events. Modern music

occupies a special place in her repertoire, and she established the ElettroVoce Duo together

with composer and pianist Cezary Duchnowski in 2001. She has premiered and recorded

numerous works by other contemporary composers. In the past few years she has performed

aield: basically, if it’s good music and it hasn’t yet been recorded, Toccata Classics will be exploring it.

8

Lutosławski’s Chantefleurs et Chantefables, Bernhard Lang’s DW9, Salvatore Sciarrino’s Luci mie traditrici and Zygmunt Krauze’s The Star and appeared in the title role in Phaedra, an opera by

Dobromila Jaskot, and as Madeline in Glass’ The Fall of the House of Usher. She has performed

many concerts abroad, in Europe, North America and the Far East. In 2009 two new CDs were

published by CD Accord: Cascando with her own chamber music and Poems with songs by

Copland, Berg and Szymański.

She has won many awards and competitions for both voice and composition. In 2005

she received the prestigious ‘Passport’ of  Polityka  award for classical music. In the same

year her  Second Symphony, commissioned by Deutsche Welle, was premiered during the

Beethoven Festival in Bonn. Subsequent commissions have included  her String Quartet

No. 1  for the Ultraschall Festival in Berlin (2007),  of the Songs  for the Wratislavia Cantans

Festival (2007), Cascando for the Central European Music Festival in Seattle (2007), the Third

Symphony for the Rockefeller Foundation (2008), Oresteia for Teatr Wielki/Polish National

Opera (2011), Aphorisms on Miłosz for the Sacrum Profanum Festival in Krakow (2011) and

Shades of Ice for the London Sinfonietta (2011). Her website can be found at www.zubel.pl.

The young Austrian baritone Mathias Hausmann has become widely recognised for a series of

international TV, DVD and CD productions from the Salzburg Festival, the Teatro alla Scala,

and the Mörbisch Festival. From 2004 to 2009 he was been a member of the Volksoper in

Vienna, where he soon became a popular favourite. He also considers the Teatro alla Scala a

second artistic home. He studied with Karl Ernst Hoffmann in Graz, Walter Berry in Vienna,

and Ryland Davies at the Royal College of Music in London. He also worked with singers

such as Sir Thomas Allen, Cecilia Bartoli, Christa Ludwig, Thomas Quasthoff, Grace Bumbry

and Ileana Cotrubas. He is grateful also to Thomas Hampson, from whom he gained many

important artistic instincts.

His roles include Mozart’s Papageno, Guglielmo and Almaviva, Rossini’s Barbiere and

Dandini, Marcello in La Bohème, Eisenstein and Dr Falke in Die Fledermaus and Danilo in Die lustige Witwe. He was also heard in the Austrian debut performance of Nicholas Maw’s Sophie’s

Choice with Angelika Kirschschlager.

Mathias Hausmann frequently performs at festivals such as Salzburg and Edinburgh, the

London Handel Festival, the Ravinia Festival in Chicago, Klangbogen and Osterklang Vienna,

9

Styriarte, the Haydn Festival Eisenstadt, and the Festival Latour de France. He has performed

at such venues as the Teatro San Carlo in Naples, the Théâtre des Champs-Elysées, the

Hollywood Bowl, the Bunka Kaikan Hall in Tokyo, the Danish Royal Opera House, the Teatro

Teresa Carreño in Caracas, the New Israeli Opera in Tel Aviv, the opera houses of Antwerp,

Ghent and Berne; the Wigmore Hall in London; the Gewandhaus in Leipzig; Herkulessaal and

Prinzregententheater in Munich; at the Philharmonies in Luxembourg, Munich, Düsseldorf,

Essen and Cologne; and the Staatsoper, Konzerthaus and Musikverein in Vienna. He has

performed with the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra, the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra,

the London Mozart Players, the Scottish Chamber Orchestra, the Simón Bolívar Youth

Orchestra, the Bach Academy in Stuttgart, the Gewandhaus Orchester, the Concerto Köln

and the Mozarteumorchester, Salzburg. Conductors with whom he has worked include

Daniel Barenboim, Riccardo Chailly, Sir Colin Davis, Gustavo Dudamel, Adam Fischer, Ton

Koopman, Yannick Nézet-Séguin and Hellmuth Rilling.

Mathias’ recent engagements include a concert at the Hollywood Bowl with Gustavo

Dudamel and the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra; the title role in a new production

of Dantons Tod by Gottfried von Einem at the Museumsquartier, Vienna, and Haydn’s Die

Jahreszeiten with Adam Fischer. His website can be found at http://mathiashausmann.com.

The NFM Wrocław Chamber Orchestra Leopoldinum (www.leopoldinum.art.pl) was founded

over thirty years ago. Its name refers to the name of one of the most precious monuments of

central European Baroque architecture: the Aula Leopoldina at the Wrocław University. Its new

venue, the National Forum of Music – one of the most prestigious concert complexes, with a

concert hall of around 1800 seats, three chamber halls, rehearsal rooms and more – is home not

only for the Leopoldinum Orchestra but also other ensembles like the Wrocław Philharmonic

Orchestra, Philharmonic Choir and many festivals, such as Wratislavia Cantans, the Leo

Festival and Musica Polonica/Electronica Nova (www.nfm.wroclaw.pl).

The Leopoldinum Orchestra, which brings together some outstanding musicians,

has earned substantial critical and public acclaim with appearances at such venues as the

Philharmonie and Schauspielhaus in Berlin, the Tivoli Koncertsal in Copenhagen, the Teatro

Victoria Eugenia in San Sebastian and at festivals including Arcana, the Gottfried von Einem

10

Tage, St Gallen and Brücken festivals in Austria, Flanders Festival and Europalia in Belgium,

Muziekfestival West-Brabant in Holland, Bodensee-Festival and Weilburger Schlosskonzerte in

Germany, Echternach Festival in Luxembourg, Du Périgord Noir in France, Estoril in Portugal 

and, in Poland, Warsaw Autumn, Ludvig van Beethoven Easter Festival, Wratislavia Cantans and

Musica Polonica and Electronica Nova. Since 2007 the Artistic Director has been Ernst Kovacic.

The orchestra has recorded several albums, including a Rossini Gala with Ewa Podleś

(contralto), which received the Polish Phonographic Academy Fryderyk Award in 1999. This

Krenek CD is the sixth that the Leopoldinum Orchestra has recorded under Ernst Kovacic’s

direction.

Explore Unknown Music with the Toccata Discovery ClubSince you’re reading this booklet, you’re obviously someone who likes to explore music more widely than the

mainstream offerings of most other labels allow. Toccata Classics was set up explicitly to release recordings of

music – from the Renaissance to the present day – that the microphones have been ignoring. How often have you

heard a piece of music you didn’t know and wondered why it hadn’t been recorded before? Well, Toccata Classics

aims to bring this kind of neglected treasure to the public waiting for the chance to hear it – from the major musical

centres and from less-well-known cultures in northern and eastern Europe, from all the Americas, and from further

aield: basically, if it’s good music and it hasn’t yet been recorded, Toccata Classics will be exploring it. To link label and listener directly we have launched the Toccata Discovery Club, which brings its members

substantial discounts on all Toccata Classics recordings, whether CDs or downloads, and also on the range of

pioneering books on music published by its sister company, Toccata Press. A modest annual membership fee

brings you two free CDs when you join (so you are saving from the start) and opens up the entire Toccata Classics

catalogue to you at discounted prices, both new recordings and existing releases. Frequent special offers bring

further discounts. If you are interested in joining, please visit the Toccata Classics website at www.toccataclassics.

com and click on the ‘Discovery Club’ tab for more details.

11

First Violins

Christian Danowicz, leader

Agata Jeleńska

Lilianna Koman-Blicharska

Anna Szufłat

Anna Pozdiejewa

Jowita Kłopocka

Second Violins

Tymoteusz Rapak

Dorota Pindur

Arkadiusz Pawluś

Mirosław Dzięcielski

Aleksandra Pawłowska

Violas

Michał Micker

Kamil Walasek

Tomasz Pstrokoński-

Nawratil

Konstanty Poźniak

Szymon Kruk

Cellos

Marcin Misiak

Jakub Kruk

Monika Łapka

Jacek Francuz

Double-Basses

Mirosław Mały

Paweł Jabłczyński

Flutes

Rafał Nalewajka

Agnieszka Karwowska

Jan Krzeszowiec (Im Tal der Zeit)

Oboes

Sebastian Aleksandrowicz

Wojciech Merena (Im Tal der Zeit)

Clarinets

Artur Adamski

Grzegorz Tobis

Jarosław Podsiadlik (Im Tal der Zeit)

Bassoons

Artur Kasperek

Katarzyna Zdybel (Im Tal der Zeit)

Horns

Zbigniew Monkiewicz

Łukasz Łacny

Adam Wolny (Im Tal der Zeit)

Trumpet

Seweryn Wróbel

Trombones

Andrzej Sienkiewicz

Tomasz Hajda (Im Tal der Zeit)

Percussion

Robert Sztorc

Dariusz Bury

Rafał Kucharski

Marceli Folta

Harp

Malwina Lipiec

Celesta

Anna Rutkowska-Schock

Piano

Agnieszka Aleksandrowicz

Mathilde Hoursiangou (Im Tal der Zeit)

Guitar

Dominik Tomasiak

3

4

4 7 8

12

Die Nachtigall

Karl Kraus

Ihr MenschenskinderIhr Menschenkinder, seid ihr nicht Laub,verweht im Wald,ihr Gebilde aus Staub,und vergeht so bald!Und wir sind immer. Wir verkünden euch den Wechsel im Jahr,ihr fragt uns um Ratund wir sagen euch wahrund wir führen die Tat.Wir weben und wissen. Ihr habt das Gesetz, wir haben die Weltund uns ist erlaubt,was uns gefallt.O kommt und glaubt!Wir lieben Verliebte. Zuerst war Eros im goldenen Lichtund wir wurden im Hagals sein Hochgedichtam strahlenden Tagvon ihm erschafen. Wir Vögel, vor den Göttern erwacht,der Tiefe entstammt,wir Enkel der Nacht,vom Tag überlammt,wir sind die Liebe!

he Nightingale

Translation by Ernst Krenek

You human beings

You human beings, are you not leaves

Swept away in the woods,

You forms of dust,

And vanish so soon!

And we are always.

We announce to you the change of the year,

You consult us

And we make prophecies,

Ad we conduct the deed.

We weave and we know.

You have the law, we have the world,

And to us is permitted

What pleases us!

O come and believe!

We love lovers.

First Eros dwelled in golden Light

And in the grove

As his master poem

On a glorious day

We were created by him.

We birds, awake before the gods,

Born from the depth,

We offspring of the night,

Bathed with fire of the day,

We are love!

2 2

13

[1

2

The Dissembler

I am an actor –

Pretending to be what I am not, acting out what I imagine I would do were I another self.

Do I suppress my own, hiding behind borrowed masks? Do I frantically search for credible counterfeits? Afraid of truth?

But – what is truth?

I do it to exhibit myself, to arouse amazement, to become famous for how voraciously I devour the essence of those I

observe, how glibly I slip into their empty hulls.

To tell you the truth: I am not even an actor – I am a dissembler. I behave as if I were an actor, reflecting through the

mirrors of my persona what emanates from my victims, to make their beings radiate more faithfully, more truthfully than

they have known themselves.

Truthfully: this is my cue. Seeking truth through deceit, verity through dissembling.

Here I impersonate the scientist who has relegated metaphysics to the attic of the palace of enlightenment. I’ll accept

nothing but incontrovertible truth. Truth is what can be proven by experiment. Now I scrutinize the Universe. I probe

space and time. I explore the dire vortices where gigantic stars, reduced to points of power, vanish from their appointed

orbits. I want to know, I must see where they go, for I know only what I see.

‘Zum Sehen geborn,zum Schauen bestellt,dem Turme geschworen,gefällt mir die Welt.…Und wie mir’s gefallen,So gefall’ ich auch mir.’

‘O grenzenlose Fülle, Mass für Mass,O Gleichgewicht, Zirkelspiel, Gestalt.’

‘Keen vision my dower,

placed here for my sight,

and sworn to the tower,

in the world I delight

…

And as they astound me,

myself I commend.’

Goethe, Faust II

‘Oh fullness without bounds, measure by measure,

oh equipoise, circle game, shape.’

Krenek, Sestina

14

I have created devices to inspect the ininitesimal hiding in the folds of nothingness. Under my gaze it changes. What is

change? It is not what it was. But, then: what was? I measure how fast it moves, but I can’t tell where it is. Is there no truth

any longer? Only probability? No cause to verify? No efect to measure? Chance supreme?

‘Zufall – le hasard –

τύχην δὲ πάντα τἀν βροτοῖς ἐπισκοπεῖν; 

– un coup de dés

Alea iacta esto – Ἀνεῤῥίφθω ὁ κύβος 

‘Der Würfel fällt, die Zahl war nur ein Zufall’

‘Does chance among mortals govern everything?

Euripides, Hecuba, 491

‘he die is cast, the number was just chance.’

Krenek, Sestina

I must turn to human afairs, analyze predictable motivations.

I shall be a judge, I administer the law. I dispense justice. I ind truth.

‘What – is – Truth?’

Who are you?

‘he Devil’s advocate, at your service, your Honor.’

Truth is what can be proven by two witnesses.

‘Here, your Honor, are your witnesses. hey swear they saw him do it.’

Now I know without the shadow of a doubt that the accused is guilty. he truth is that he did it.

‘But was it right or wrong?’

I consult the law.

‘Who made the law?’

he wise men of ages past; they knew good and evil.

‘Because I made them eat of the forbidden fruit.’

We paid for it with misery and death.

‘Eripe me de luto, ut no inigar.’

‘Libera me de lacu profundo, de ore leonis, ne absorbeat me tartarus, ne cadam in obscurum.’

‘Deliver me out of the mire that I may not be impaled.’

Ps. 68: 15; 69: 14

‘Deliver me from the depths of the lake, from the lion’s

jaws, that hell may not swallow me, that I may not fall

into darkness.’

Missale Rom.

15

I turn to the absurd.

‘Why not try these cards?’

What is the game? I’m tired of chance.

‘It is the wisdom of ages past.’

We were betrayed before.

‘hey tell the truth.’

he triangle – the square –

‘hey relect the Universe ...’

he emperor – the wheel of fortune – the chariot two horses pulling hither and yon – where is the truth? Justice… – the

Tower: broken – la Maison dieu –

‘Go on.’

he fool – and here: the Hanging Man, upside down, between heaven and earth –

‘It is you.’

he juggler – the joker – bagatto, bagatto, bagatto ultimo – and the truth?

‘he end of it all.’

‘Factus sum sicut nycticorax in domicilio. Dies mei sicut umbra declinaverunt et ego sicut faenum arui.’

‘Nemo est qui semper vivat. Melior est canis vivus leone mortuo. Viventes enim sciunt se esse morituros. Mortui vero nihil noverunt amplius nec habent ultra mercedem, quia oblivioni tradita est memoria eorum.’

‘I am like an owl in the desert. My days are like a shadow

that declineth; and I am withered like grass.’

Ps. 101: 7, 12.; 102: 6, 11.

‘No one lives forever. A living dog is better that a dead

lion. For the living know that they shall die: but the dead

know not any thing, neither have they any more a reward;

for the memory of them is forgotten.’

Eccl. 9: 4, 5.

And now I shall pretend to be myself.

While I was a child, I believed what they put before me to believe, not asking why I should nor what it was. My tower was

whole, I stood on solid ground. When I grew in years, I lived by the light of knowledge. I let reason crack my tower of faith.

I espoused doubt – a ickle bride. With me she did abide. With her I merrily sailed on stormy seas. As I now approach the

dire vortex where we shall be sucked out of this chaos to hide in the folds of nothingness, I wonder, I wonder – oh blissful

source of thinking – and I believe as the spirit moves me, the Spirit of Intelligence, the Holy – and what I believe I call truth.

All this was just pretense. his is my exit cue. he dissembler goes. I am the juggler, the joker, bagatto, bagatto, bagatto

ultimo – and I remove myself from the stage. Good night.

Recorded on 21–23 March 2011 (Von Vorn Herein, Die Nachtigall, Static and Ecstatic,

he Dissembler) and 15 May 2011 (Im Tal der Zeit) in the Hall of Radio Wrocław,

Poland, by CD Accord

Producer-engineers: Ewa Lasocka and Antoni Grzymała (Von Vorn Herein, Die Nachtigall, Static and Ecstatic,

he Dissembler) and Ewa Lasocka and Wojciech Marzec (Im Tal der Zeit)

Co-ordinator: Barbara Migurska

Mastered by Richard Shaw, Richard Shaw Audio Services, Manchester

Booklet essay: Peter Tregear

Cover photograph courtesy of the Ernst Krenek Institut

Design and layout: Paul Brooks, Design and Print, Oxford

Executive Producer: Martin Anderson

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© 2012, Toccata Classics, London P 2012, Toccata Classics, London

Toccata Classics CDs can be ordered from our distributors around the world, a list of whom can

be found at www.toccataclassics.com. If we have no representation in your country, please contact:

Toccata Classics, 16 Dalkeith Court, Vincent Street, London SW1P 4HH, UK

Tel: +44/0 207 821 5020 Fax: +44/0 207 834 5020 E-mail: info@toccataclassics.com

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TOCCATA CLASSICS

16 Dalkeith Court,

Vincent Street,

London SW1P 4HH, UK

Tel: +44/0 207 821 5020

Fax: +44/0 207 834 5020

E-mail: info@toccataclassics.com

These five works for chamber orchestra by Ernst Krenek (1900–91) were

written between 1931 and 1979 – both before and long after Krenek

abandoned Hitler’s Austria for California. They demonstrate that serial music,

in capable hands, does not have to abandon the virtues of more conservative

idioms: the emotions embraced here range from translucent lyricism, via

powerful dramatic utterance, to uneasy existentialist humour.

ERNST KRENEK Music for Chamber Orchestra

Made in GerMany

*first recordinG

**first recordinG on cd

TT 77:01

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Von Vorn Herein, Op. 219 (1974) 9:56

Die Nachtigall, Op. 68a (1931) 8:08

Im Tal der Zeit, Op. 232 (1979)* 13:21

Static and Ecstatic, Op. 214 (1971–72)** 23:48

Movement 1 1:14 Movement 2 1:05 Movement 3 1:58 Movement 4 3:10 Movement 5 1:37

2

1

3

Agata Zubel, soprano Mathias Hausmann, baritone Leopoldinum OrchestraErnst Kovacic, conductor

4

Movement 6 2:12 Movement 7 2:54 Movement 8 3:19 Movement 9 1:39 Movement 10 3:40

The Dissembler, Op. 229 (1978) 22:06

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11

9

5

6

7

8

12

13

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